Where No One Knows Me
by G.E Waldo
Summary: When grief takes the wheel, regret is where it's headed. Post Dying Changes Everything. Minimum Spoilers.
1. Chapter 1

Title: **Where No One Knows Me**  
Category: TV Shows » House, M.D.  
Author: GeeLady  
Language: English, Rating: Fiction Rated: K+  
Genre: Drama/Angst  
Published: 09-17-08, Updated: 10-08-08  
Chapters: 9, Words: 17,181

Summary: A One Shot. When grief takes the wheel, regret is where it's headed. Post Dying Changes Everything. Minimum _**Spoilers.**_

Pairing: Wilson and No-one. House and No-one.

Rating: General. Language.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House to my hearts desire. No money, just fun.

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**Chapter 1:**

Wilson felt euphoric for the first few miles.

He had spoken his true feelings to House, for one of the very few times in the fifteen years he had been friends with him. No more need to now. House was behind him, past, a rough road he'd traveled for years and, at the last possible breath, he taken an exit.

When he saw the pain and quiet shock in Houses tired face, it had almost -- almost -- been enough to give him pause. Not enough to throw his soul into Reverse, and back up all those years and miles over again, only to see the same stretch of highway snaking ahead and taking him where he no longer wanted to go. Taking care of House, protecting him, enabling him, excusing him, wasn't on the map anymore.

Nothing ever changed with House and nothing was ever going to. There had to be something better, somewhere. Better friends. Better things to experience and remember. Had to be. Three wives, a prestigious career, a beautiful girlfriend, all these things had been in his hands at one time or another. But never contentment Only the striving for it. Joy and feeling right - settled - knowing you had achieved exactly what you wanted - were with exactly who you wanted to be with - he had never felt those things.

Everything wasn't Houses' fault. It was his own. He let the man use him and told himself he was being a noble friend. No one should sacrifice so much that he sacrifices self. Houses' words. Maybe paraphrased a little.

Wilson smiled into the rear-view mirror of his Volvo, seeing how it looked on him. How weird it was to see his teeth again. Maybe the smile wasn't genuine right now, but it soon would be. New job, eventually a new apartment, a new therapist and most of all, new friends. Healthy relationships.

A tiny twinge in his gut tried to convince him to, if not turn around, then call and just tell him that he hadn't really meant to say the things he had said. But the cooler headed thoughts with their shiny, happy New and Improved purpose shut it up.

House would be okay. He always said so. Always went out of his way to prove so.

Wilson kept his hands on the wheel and promised himself no regrets. Did House have regrets? Amber had to die before House was willing to apologize for being so selfish, and then he only did it because he wanted to make sure their friendship was okay.

_Then . . we're okay?_ House all over.

_Right. It was all about you House_. Thought but not spoken.

From now on it was going to be all about Wilson. He would become, he decided, more like House. _Just_ like him.

Wilson cast House from his mind.

XXX

House turned his Honda onto the sidewalk and shut off the engine. His chest was tight with nausea and his head ached. The crack in his noggin was healing well but still just enough there to kick into gear once in a while and remind him that he had almost died for being so damn stupid.

_It wasn't your fault._

House unlocked his apartment door and entered. The place was a mess. Too many nights spent with a broken skull and a dying patient and not enough at home asleep.

_You brought muscle?? _Even Cuddys' attempts at keeping him home were fruitless, as she soon found out.

But now he was in for too much sleep and too many dreams packed with words that poked and prodded at his mind. And though his heart hadn't almost stopped since that day and he hadn't experienced any seizures or coma's in weeks, he was still in pain. Two kinds of it now. The one in his leg -- as familiar as a miserable and hated old miser who clung to him like a bad relation, and the other -- a cold, hollow stranger sitting on his chest, a bruising, unforgiving visitor from ten years back he had not then been sorry to finally see go.

House stashed his cane by the desk and limped to his bathroom, stopping to stare in the mirror for a few seconds and take down the bottle of Vicodin. The last one with _his_ name.

He'd have to ask Cuddy to prescribe for him now. She was even more controlling than Wilson. Wilson had perpetually draped himself in the concerned, self-righteous friend robe, scribbling the prescription while chastising him for its abuse. Tsk, tsk, tsk, scribble, scribble . . .

Cuddy, though, once her mind was made up stood unmovable like a mountain wearing the Mommy apron with the Vicodin in one hand and a rolling pin in the other. And he was the always hungry kid. He would have to tread carefully if he wanted at least some of his days to be pain-free.

Two days previous, after Wilson left, Cuddy had already asserted her dominatrix role by emphasizing he would only get "enough Vicodin as is liver-healthy."

So, with stash cut in half, his leg was back to nearly crippling spasms and he was downing twice the Cuddy-approved amount. Maybe he could get Kutner or Taub to cough up a 'script or two as a supplement if he asked nicely or, smartly and more effectively, threatened them with being fired.

Being helpful, willing, sacrificing, good, noble and nice had got him a cracked skull, a dicky heart, a leg full of pain and his best and only friend telling him that he was done with him and couldn't remember if they had ever actually _been_ friends. House felt a stab of both pains. Only Wilson had been unsure about that part.

House thought he ought to write a paper on it. "_Get Rid of Your Best Friend by Being Nice." _He'd heard the monologues all his life from everyone. _Be nice. Be good_. His parents had drilled it into him. Being good for his Dad hadn't won him any points.

_Be self sacrificing._ Okay. He did that. He'd said yes almost without hesitation. This is Wilson._ Wilson._

But as it turned out, almost dying wasn't enough.

House swallowed two pills and sat heavily on his dark couch. A pizza box weeks old still sat empty on the coffee table. Wilson had brought it over one night a few days before the crash. First time he'd done that in three months.

House felt kind of like the pizza box. A fast-food friend. Good enough until something better comes along. He shouldn't be cynical about it. It happens to everyone at least once. _Best friends 4ever_ - until school ends. Then your life becomes a desert and you wonder where all the people went.

Wilson didn't even say where he was going or "I'll call you." He hadn't even used the common, meaningless bullshit phrases like: "We'll do lunch." or "It's not you, it's me."

What he said had been packed tight with meaning. "We're not friends anymore House."

And he had felt the floor dropped out beneath his shoes and cane. He had expected anger or shouting or a lecture or cold eyes.

Not stark naked hate.

House had never questioned his own philosophies in life. He'd learned them from others. By experience, by mother, father, friends, relatives, lonely weekends, people filling up hours with meaningless platitudes and socially conscious political correctness, by compulsory gathering of pleasantries and fake smiles, by empty, _invented _purpose. Things which made him sick to his stomach and which he could not possibly engage in unless coerced. Things which required falseness and lies to give them meaning.

"Truth" constructed from falsehoods. He just couldn't swallow it and feel like a real, honest human being. That, however, could be his problem. Perhaps he needed to learn how to be a better liar. The kind of lies people tell _all_ the time, not the kind spoken to dig up medical truths or to save a patients' life in spite of their moral stupidity.

Maybe his problem really was himself? Maybe being happy required a specific amount of make-believe? Missing his friend was a true feeling, but to survive well in the world, to do it _better_, maybe he needed to start telling the big lies? To pretend he was happy?

Maybe he needed to be more like Wilson.

XXX

_Got my suitcase_

_Got my dog_

_I'm packing up my life so far_

_Got my pictures_

_Got some cash_

_I'm getting out of here at last_

_Got my hands on the wheel_

_Got my foot on the pedal_

_Gonna drive 'til I drop_

_'Til the tires turn to metal_

_Gonna sleep when I'm dead_

_Gonna laugh like the devil_

_Gonna find some place where no one knows me_

_Gonna stop when the last drop of gas turns to vapor_

_Gonna ride 'til I can't even seem to remember_

_Who I was when I left and it don't even matter_

_Gonna find some place where no one knows me _

_(Jann Arden)_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Wilson settled in behind his new desk in his new chair in his new job at his new hospital.

He didn't have any cases yet, though the Dean assured him that would change by tomorrow when Doctor Lasson would be officially retired. The senior physician had already handed most of his cases over to another oncologist prior to Wilsons' hire date, so Wilsons' desk at the moment was bare, which left him time to think. Or not.

It was almost lunch and a muscle in his stomach tightened, telling him to guard his sandwich. But his door did not open. No one entered, sat in his patients' chair and helped himself to half the egg salad on rye or swiped the cucumbers out of his salad. No one interrupted his phone calls to tell him a puerile joke or sent email's around the hospital in his name apologizing for being snarly but it was only because it was "his time of the month". After a minute contemplating all those things that he recalled as annoying as hell, Wilson remembered where he was and his tense muscle eased off, leaving behind an odd numbness.

Of course -- he was _hungry_.

Twelve o'clock arrived and Wilson almost smiled at the relief. His sandwich was secure, his stomach could relax. He bit into the egg with pickles, mayo with lettuce, spending a few leisurely minutes contentedly chewing.

When he was done the sandwich, he looked at the clock. 12:14. With the spare time to do whatever he wanted, without the worry of House bursting into his office expecting lunch or gossip as a distraction from his current ingrate of a patient who stubbornly refused to give up the secrets of his disease, Wilson found himself glued to his chair with indecision. The hands on his wall clock seemed hardly to be moving as 12:14 was replaced by 12:_15_. Wilson groaned inside that another two hundred, eighty five minutes were left to fill until it was time to go home. He felt rather ridiculous that he had no idea what to do with the rest of his day.

He had met his new Dean, a haggard man nearing retirement, several doctors, only one with which he'd passed more than a minute or two chatting, and two nurses were already giving him the eye. He felt queasy at the idea of another relationship.

When it came to that state of human existence, at 40 years old, he was already five for zero, which House had unfailingly pointed out to him on many occasions, the most recent of which had occurred a few short weeks after he had met Amber.

House had stormed into his office after he had, once more, canceled their drinking night out, accusing him in his obnoxious way. _"You're the Liz Taylor of New Jersey. Now your need needs to prove that there is no need, so you feed it her __**approval**__ that there is no need. You're suddenly stuffed full of not needing to be needy anymore. You may as well wear a placard."_

_"Am I in a stage-play? Do you practice these bizarre speeches in the mirror?" _

_"You marry need-y women. Ambers need is to control. Your need is to let her. You've turned yourself inside-out - I can already hear the church bells."_

_"Amber is like you. You said it yourself. You don't approve of yourself?" _

_"I said she was a proxy of me with a difference. She's controlling with a thin veil of need and whose only other fault is she doesn't see the hole to China that's your need."_

Wilson had vehemently sputtered his denial. _"__**I'm**__ needy? Without me, House, you'd be even more alone and miserable than you are now. Your whole existence screams "Where's Wilson?"_ Immediately he had regretted the unnecessarily hurtful way he had phrased it, his implication being House would not only be friendless without his trusty side-kick Wilson, but that he was virtually friendless now. House shouted and pointed out weaknesses but Wilson, to his shame, has just mocked Houses'. .

Wilson was quietly disturbed to note that, even though House had looked hurt, he had neither sputtered nor denied the truth of it. He had looked away to the window. Wilson suspected it was to hide his eyes in case they might accidently give anything else away. _"I know where my pathologies are." _House admitted. _"I have them and I don't care. Maybe I will end up alone but I'll be honest about it."_

XXX

Foremans' name graced the door of Wilsons' old office. House passed by it half a dozen times a day, never once catering to feelings of nostalgia when he passed.

He'd never given a damn about the office.

Presently what grated the most about Wilsons' dramatic exodus from the hospital was everyone who had known he and Wilson had been best friends, felt obligated to throw him awkward looks of kindness and tiny pats on his shoulder or back. Sometimes they'd take hold of his forearm with delicate hands like it was the consistency of souffle and was going to collapse under their grasp if they didn't squeeze it just right.

His colleagues were all but joining hands and _Kum-bay-yah-ing_ up and down the halls. Social decorum was swarming like an army of ants and House was itchy all over with their sympathy. House had decided the next person to stop him in the hall and say "I'm sorry" was going to get the blunt end of his cane in their eye, whether or not they knew him as more than just the crazy crippled Doctor Cuddy kept on the payroll.

Lunch was a routine of the park on nice days if his leg wasn't too bad, and his office on bad days when he couldn't amble along quite as usual. Since Cuddy had cut back on his Vicodin (and he had thus far been unable to bribe or threaten any of his new or old fellowships to write him a script for more), his office was seeing an awful lot of him. He caught himself dusting the top of his desk and, horrified, tossed the rag away. He was even getting backed up paperwork done and that was so, _so_ much worse.

That dusting and paperwork were sufficient reasons to fill up his many spare minutes, it heavily underlined to him that he had no life. Wilson had walked away and House, too stunned to move, had let him.

_"I'm not sure we ever were."_

Friends, Wilson had meant. He wasn't sure they had ever been friends. House was convinced it had been an emotional knee-jerk reaction. Wilson was angry and hurt and sad and needed to vent, and to _in_vent an excuse to run away from his grief. House had walked in just at the wrong time. Impeccable timing. _Not sure_?? After fifteen years, you would know. Even Wilson isn't that oblivious.

But Wilson was staying gone and wouldn't take his calls.

House sat swiveling back and forth in his chair, thinking about possible actions that might reverse this extemporaneous emotional flight on his friends' part. He'd been considering the problem most of the morning. A glint caught his eye.

Someone had spilled a box of paper-clips. Their disarray offended his orderly mind. He didn't care about the mess, he told himself as he bent over. But paperclips are not supposed to be on the carpet and someone was going to get a talking to once he figured out who had spilled the paperclips. They'd probably borrowed them from his desk, spilled them, and ran when they saw House walking down the hall. Probably Kutner. He wasn't a nervous guy or someone who fretted about offending anyone, though House was sure Kutner was scared of _him_. Unfortunately not enough to begin writing him scripts for narcotics just because he asked.

But Kutner was a 4.0 klutz. Probably first in his class. Kutner had spilled the paperclips. House, satisfied with his little office differential - the mystery of the wayward paperclips was diagnosed - checked the clock on the wall. His fellowships had all gone to lunch and wouldn't be back for an hour. His conference room was empty. His lunch was finished. Cuddy was in a meeting. No one was around to render treatment to the paperclips.

One by one, he began to pick up the paper-clips.

XXX

"Wilson was right to get out of here." Foreman said.

The controversy about Doctor Wilsons' quick departure had circled the hospital and everyone had an opinion, from "He's free of that jerk at last." to "Running away won't ease the pain." Personally Foreman didn't care what James Wilson did. And although he wasn't holding his breath, he was hopeful that Wilsons' abandonment of the friendship might teach House a lesson or two. "If it makes his life easier, it was the right thing to do."

"House seems really down." Kutner observed. He'd been keeping his eye on his boss for a few days. House was always unpredictable but lately he'd been unpredictable with a drawn, gloomy face.

Taub shrugged. "Different people react in different ways to grief. Wilson runs away. . . ."

Hadley and the rest waited for him to finish. "And?" She finally asked.

"And House runs _to_." Taub answered.

"What does that mean?" Foreman asked.

Taub shrugged his shoulders a little, sort of a gesture of surprise that no one else had noticed it. "House won't let this lie. He'll be following Wilson around or dropping in, sending him Stinky Gorilla-a-grams or an anatomically correct teddy bear. He'll push until Wilson either gets a court order - which would by no means guarantee to keep House at bay - or gives in." He drew a twenty from his wallet and placed it in the middle of the table. "Who's money is on _give in_?"

Hadley reached for her purse. "Oh, I'll take that action. Twenty on Wilson caving."

Kutner slapped down a twenty. "Same here."

"You are so mistaken, Taub." Foreman threw his money in. "Wilson's put up with some serious shit but no _way_ is Wilson gonna' just forget this one."

"You're wrong." Taub said.

Foreman raised his eyebrows and added a second twenty dollar bill. "Oh? Let's make it double or nothing just between you and me."

Taub added another twenty to the growing pile. "I don't want any hard feelings. I'll be taking your money."

Hadley asked Taub, "What makes you so sure Wilson will come crawling back?"

"I didn't say he would crawl back." He replied. "And my reasons aren't open for discussion _before_ the bet is done."

Kutner added. "No take-backs." He said to the group, looking at each one. "Agreed?"

Nods all around.

"Where is House anyway?" Hadley asked.

Foreman said, "He said he had an appointment."

Taub raised eyebrows so naturally rounded that they gave his expression a look of perpetual irony. "He's probably over at Wilson's apartment right now threading a sneak-peak camera through the key-hole."

A joke all knew enough about House not to seriously dismiss.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3:**

"A new member is joining us today." Douglas, the twenty-five year old grief counselor with a Brad Pitt hair cut and artificial tan nodded to his latest client who cracked the smallest artificial smile he could get away with as he looked around the room. Everyone said their perfunctory welcome's or hello's.

"Since you're new, why don't you tell us a little bit of about why you're here." Douglas crossed his legs, effecting his best _I have a degree in psychology _pose.

"I . . .lost someone." A sad pair of eyes fell to the floor. Other sets of eyes watched him, some grieving, some achieving "acceptance", some "turning a corner", some getting "closure", some too stunned to react at all.

"I cared, probably didn't always show it but, and this I have to take on trust, I was loved in return."

Sympathetic nods circled the room.

"And now she's gone?" The tiniest woman in the room gently asked.

"_He." _Corrected their new member, a middle aged man with a two day shadow on his cheeks, a limp and a cane.

A pair of other stunned eyes stared at the floor, refusing to acknowledge a word or a glance from the newest member or anyone else.

"What happened?" Tiny woman asked. Though it wasn't ten minutes into the hour long session, her eyes were red already from five minutes of dabbing a hanky to her eyes.

"I'm not ready to go into the specifics. That's okay, right?"

Douglas assured him that it was, then realized he was remiss. "Sorry, everyone, our newest member is Greg. He's asked to join in on a few sessions. But you're right, Greg, you're not obligated to share anything the first time, or anything you don't want to share in subsequent sessions."

Greg looked puzzled. "What's the difference? You mean I don't have to share anything ever?"

Douglas tilted his head most reasonably. "No, but we want you to feel ready before you do. For most, it takes a session or two before they're ready to talk."

Greg, hands resting comfortably on his cane, shrugged. "'K."

"So. Let's start in earnest, shall we?" Douglas intoned. "Intro's as usual."

Around the room, their lips moved:

"Allan." Thin accountant.

"Sheila." Blonde bombshell.

"Rhonda." Five kids.

"Gerry." Fat guy.

"Surrinder." Delivery company.

"Bianca." Real estate agent.

"Connie." The tiny red-eye widow.

"Evelyn." Health care worker.

They all waited for the last member of their little group to speak who had joined the group several weeks ago. Everyone liked him. After another awkward moment of silence he raised dark, angry eyes and, with the countenance of a man who wanted nothing more than to bolt from the room, looked over at Greg. Finally, angry man ground out through clenched teeth -

"_James_." Oncologist.

XXX

"What the _hell_ are you doing here?" Wilson accosted him by the coffee and cookie counter during the ten minute break, whispering fiercely.

House said while adding sugar to his cup, stirring and munching a hard, almost tasteless cookie, "I'm in mourning."

Wilson wanted to hit him. "You are _not_. You're just here to screw with me."

"Not everything's about you, you know." House answered, calm as Lake Placid. He finally looked up at Wilson, former best friends and colleague, eye to eye. "There _is_ a world beyond you."

Wilson recognized his own words. "This won't work, House. I'll just quit the group."

House put a lid on his Styrofoam cup, balanced the remnants of the awful cookie on top and, carrying his snack in his left hand, limped back to his chair. "No you won't." House answered with a confidence he didn't completely feel. Yet Wilson followed him to his chair. _And_ sat down beside him.

With an angry flush to his cheeks, "What makes you so damn sure?" Wilson asked.

House looked around the room. "You've been coming here a couple of months. These are your new friends and cry-buddies. You've "moved on" from me, remember? You're not ready to _again_ move on, at least not right now."

"You're a perverse son-of-a-bitch, House."

"I have every right to counseling. I can choose any group I like. I like these people." House looked at Wilson epiphany style - eyes wide open with a face of surprise - They're so, so _real." _

"Fine. Do whatever your narcissistic ego needs to. Annoy all you want. I'll be ignoring you, so don't bother speaking to me."

"Too late for both."

Wilson stood and moved deliberately to sit in the chair farthest away from him.

For six more minutes, people ate and drank and talked about things removed from themselves. Break was a break from grief, the main topic.

The session re-started with Douglas addressing the new guy. "Greg? Do you want to talk about it?"

Greg sat forward. "Sure."

"Can you tell us when this person parted?" Douglas had a casket full of euphemisms for death.

"About two months ago." Greg glanced over at James. "There was no warning, and I don't even know how it happened. Never got all the details. The whys."

"If life teaches us anything," Douglas said with text book wisdom, "it teaches us that sometimes there is no why. But tell us how have you been since then?"

Greg didn't have a quick come-back for that and this time didn't look at anyone. "Not bad. Doing my job."

"What _do_ you do?" Rhonda asked.

"I'm a doctor. A Diagnostician at Plainsboro hospital."

Douglas glanced over to James with a look that said _Ah, another doctor. You two ought to have a lot in common. You should go for coffee and share._

"Who died?" Asked Allan.

Greg stared at James then looked away. "The most important person in my life."

XXX

After session ended, House walked to his motorcycle. Just as he stored his cane in its little rubber clasp and was climbing on, he saw Wilson striding toward him like a man marching to war. When he was close enough for no one else to hear, "Stay the hell away from me, House." He warned.

House didn't answer. He didn't look up at Wilson. He couldn't think of anything clever to say. During session he had felt confident and ready to rumble with Wilson - hash everything out in front of a room full of strangers.

Now he was drawing a blank. Until, "You want justice." House said, a realization dawning like a heavenly light. He stared at him, believing he was hitting the coffin nail on the head. "Your girlfriend dies. You can't save her. _I_ can't save her. So you look back on fifteen years and decide - "If only I hadn't ever met House, this would never have happened. So if I get away from House, it'll be like this _didn't_ happened."

Wilson sighed. "That's not what this is."

House snapped, "Then _what_ is it?"

Wilson laughed but not humorously. "I don't have to tell you anything House. We're not friends anymore. I can hate you for absolutely no reason at all."

House would not be swayed by cruelty. "There's always a reason."

"Oh?"

"Yep." He put on his helmet and started his Honda. "A person doesn't hate anything for no reason, 'cause if he does, _he's_ the reason."

XXX

"New patient?"

House listened to Taub as he described their patients' symptoms. "Seventy-three year old female, joint swelling, chronic bronchial infections, fatigue - "

"-Stop. Seventy-three? Fatigue? Bad joints? Okay, here's what's wrong with her: chronic bronchitis cause she sits around from fatigue due to bad joints that won't let her do much anymore. That is not a disease, it's retirement."

Taub continued as though he hadn't heard. "- rash, muscle pain, nausea, shall I go on?"

"No. And why didn't you _say_ so? Full work-up. Check for usual infections and allergies for the swelling, medications and toxins for the rash, and treat her for all of the above with antibiotics and anti-inflamatories. Call me if you find anything."

Taub asked, trying to keep the curiosity from his voice. "Where are you going to be?"

"I have an appointment." House said, then added before he hung up, "And put me down for a hundred that Wilson's going to cave."

Taub was taken aback but only paused over the line for a few seconds. "Sure."

House closed his phone and smiled to himself, admiring his underlings' quick recovery.

House gathered up his dozen bagels to go, handing the money to the plump, pretty girl behind the counter. He walked to the curb, tucked the bag into his black, leather jacket, zipping it up half-way to keep it there, and hopped on his bike.

"Group" awaited


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4:**

"So your best friend actually abandoned you after your lover died?" Rhonda of the child herd looked stricken. "How selfish. How - how _cruel_."

Greg fiddled with his cane, tapping it on the floor, its rubber tip making tiny black marks a janitor was going to have to scrub away later. "I don't think he did it to be cruel." Greg corrected her. "I think he's . . . just confused."

House kept his face neutral and his voice flat but he felt that same cold sinking shock every time he thought about Wilsons' final words to him spoken from his pinched, pale lips and eyes leaking pain. _We're not friends anymore, House. _They had struck like cannon shots to his mid-section_. _

House chanced a quick look across the circle. Wilson was staring at him though House could not tell what his expression memory of Wilsons' face on the bus was there in his mind. When House woke up and knew it was Amber who was dying . . .Wilson's world had started to crumble. Only now, in this room, did he consider that Wilson had come to love and depend on that small world of domestic regularity he had managed to erect amidst all the pressure from his career and his best friends always erratic, sometimes incomprehensible and often self-destructive behavior.

A bit of self-rightness inside him stepped aside when to House the thought occurred that maybe Wilson wasn't like him and he had no right to expect him to be. Maybe Wilson really did need some sort of traditional, regular home-life to counter-balance a volatile and demanding, slightly insane best friend. At the time, before he remembered everything, House wondered what percentage of that first agony on Wilson's face he had caused?

But then Wilson's last words had drowned almost everything else out. _I'm not sure we __**ever**__ were. _Fifteen years of watching Wilson grow into someone he depended on, cared about, worried over and admittedly, obsessed over. The closest, first truly best friend he had ever had in his life telling him they had never _really_ been friends. How was that _not_ like a death?

Therefore if that were true, if Jimmy really felt that way, what did that say about his own judgement? His assessment of what they had been to each other had to have been way off. If it were true then he had thoroughly misjudged Wilson's affection for him and he himself had - by _mistake_ - hovered protectively over his one friend for fifteen years, constantly in fear of losing him.

Fifteen years. He'd spent a third of his life believing someone cared only to find out they didn't really. _Hadn't_ really. Since then he felt like someone with a hole in him. Like someone had taken a spoon and gouged out a cavern in his center.

A miasma of emotions swirled around in him, feeling invasive and uncomfortable. Suddenly House blurted out before he was able to catch himself in time, "I almost _died_ for him and he never even thanked me." House stared across the circle at Wilson who was keeping his eyes averted. "Afterward, he didn't visit me in the hospital or even _once_ ask how I was."

House was shocked at himself, speaking his true feelings on the matter perhaps for the first time since the accident. Since that time he had been treading so softly around Wilson's palpable grief, he had buried his own concerns as far down as they would go, not accepting their importance, like he rarely did any emotion from himself and rarely from anyone else either. Now he had gone and expressed a genuine feeling to this group of strangers he was only using to work on Wilson - to get him back.

House clamped his mouth shut, feeling like an idiot. He did not want to lose control of the situation or his command of his own heart. He was _not _grieving. He was researching. Wilson would have called it manipulating. What choice did he have when the idiot wouldn't give him a straight answer?

These private thoughts were interrupted with a word from James whom, Douglas had noted, had been very quiet all month. "I almost lost a friend once too. He got himself in a shit load of trouble and tried to OD. I found him on his apartment floor - figured he was dead. For a few seconds, I couldn't even breath. Longest few seconds I had ever experienced up until learning Amber was dying. Two of the _worst_ moments of my life."

Greg was staring at James and Douglas wondered if the two had managed a moment to bond outside of session. "Thank you James. I'm sure it helps Greg to know he isn't alone."

Connie wanted to know, "What happened? You said you risked your life."

House shook his head. "Doesn't matter. I tired to help someone and I couldn't. It was too late."

Douglas asked, "Was this after your life-partner died?"

House didn't bother to correct him. "Sorta' the same time."

"That's so sad." Bianca of the big hair and cougar clothing choices said. "But we'll be your friends." She assured him. _Everything will be roses again_ her Mary Poppins smile said. _You'll see!_

"Yes." Rhonda agreed eagerly. "We love you, Greg."

Out of the corner of his eye, as he was gathering the mocking words he intended to dump on her naivete, even Wilson rolled his eyes and snorted a little. Maybe he even knew how utterly silly she sounded.

_Touchy-feely_ _bull shit._ House wanted to snarl. How can anyone lose someone in death and not know that love can't just be tossed around like a beach-ball? "You _love_ me? You've only known me three weeks, and of that only three _hours."_

"Yes, well . . ." Rhonda reasoned sweetly, "I mean _all _people should love each other."

House met Wilson's eyes and didn't look away. "They should," he answered, "but they don't."

Wilson spoke up. "Sometimes people don't bother to show love until it's too late."

"Or maybe just don't know _how. _Or show it differently than others." House countered.

"And sometimes not at all." Wilson said.

House was staring right at Wilson now. Screwing the under-cover persona, "Maybe they would if the friend were told the _truth_ once in a while, instead of being left to guess how the other person was feeling. Instead of having to spy and dig through his desk to figure out what the hell was going on with him. Maybe if that friend hadn't blabbed everything his friend of fifteen years said to his girlfriend, the friend might have been able to still trust him like he used to. Maybe if that friend hadn't canceled beers nights, forcing the other to humiliate himself and arrange a schedule to see him. So he could have a little time with his only friend!? So he could confide when he . . . when the stupid bastard finally figured out that he needed to."

House ran out of words and the strength to say them. He was sitting forward, his cane thrusting across the short expanse of space between himself and James, like a judges accusing gavel. He was breathing fast, his face flushed from his outburst. All in the room were staring at him in shock, and he let the cane drop to the floor with a bang.

House looked sheepishly at Wilson and then at Douglas. "Sorry." He muttered.

Wilson said, his voice weary, his words sad, "Maybe if that second friend had opened up just once or twice during those fifteen years and let himself be helped, all of the tug of war and anger and shutting out and self-destructive acts might not have been necessary? And all of the first friends' sleepless nights and worry and feelings of hopelessness and fear - because he didn't know whether or not _this_ time his friend might die because he didn't care enough about his life to _not _stick a knife in a wall socket, swallow a bottle of pills or push away the people who care? Maybe if he had shown some measure of human vulnerability, all of his friends gut twisting worry might have been for _something?"_ Wilson sat forward, too, rubbing his face in his hands. "Maybe all of this could have been avoided?"

Douglas observed this odd and unexpected angry exchange with great interest. His perceptiveness was not as young as he looked and he squinted a little at them both. "Do you two . . _know_ each other?"

House suddenly wanted to leave._ Needed_ to leave. As fast as possible.

He could feel his legs shaking and thought maybe he was coming down with something. That's what he told the group anyway before getting to trembling legs and hitching out the door as fast as he safely could go with a cane on old, waxed linoleum.

On the way out of the second class building he found a men's room. It smelled of sewer but was otherwise relatively clean. He used the urinal and spent some minutes washing and drying his hands, trying to find some measure of calm.

In the mirror he saw a man looking back who was much older than he remembered. Older and more tired looking than the residual image of himself he automatically carried around inside his head. Time was catching up fast. The lines around his eyes had multiplied. His hair was greyer than even the previous year. His pain was constant. No reduction had occurred like the physio-therapist a decade before had assured him it would.

A man creeping from middle to old age stared at him with deep set, unhappy eyes and he was suddenly so depressed he thought he might cry again if he didn't get out of there.

House hurried to his bike and rode away.

He wouldn't go back to the group, he decided. He would do as Wilson asked and not bother him anymore. He would leave Wilson be and that decision suddenly hurt so much he did cry. A couple of tears on a cheek, nothing major, nothing to blur his vision as he rode. But enough to convince him that maybe he was in mourning after all.

House parked his bike outside his new drinking fountain and went inside. For now, this was therapy enough.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: **

_"It's okay." he smiles and says_

_but the loneliness is driving him crazy._

_You don't know _

_what goes on in his head._

_But if you watch very close_

_you'll see it all._

_**Little River Band**_

XXX

"Another."

"Don't you think you've had enough?"

"I know when I've had enough, I'm a doctor."

The bald thirty-something bartender poured him out another bourbon and House knocked it back. He was feeling the marvelous buzz of alcohol, that edge of the numbing precipice near which his mind was teetering. One more double and he'd be free falling into the oblivion of feeling absolutely nothing.

This wasn't Sharries Bar. After all that nonsense a few months ago, he'd switched to Mel's Three Bells Tavern. He still had an hour before Mel - if that was his real name - rang the brass bell hanging from a rope hooked to the ceiling and which dangled over his thick redwood bar counter. Three bells and his patrons would know it was last call.

But House had to work tomorrow, so his last call was now. He took out his cell phone and speed dialed -

- he ended the call before it rang. Better not call _him._

He dialed another series of numbers and after a few minutes a woman's sleepy voice answered. "Umph, 'llo?"

"I need a ride home."

There was a fat pause. "House?" Cameron was awake now and House could see the mussy hair, the frown between her brows at her old flame calling her, but only because he wanted a ride. She spit into the phone, "Are you insane? Scratch that. God - can't you call a cab?"

"I ran out of money."

"I'm not getting up in the middle of the night and bringing you home from the bar."

"Don't you love me any more?"

She paused and House felt a tiny spark of triumph at the small score.

She continued. "I have work tomorrow and unless you've quit your job, I'm pretty sure you have work tomorrow too. Call a cab and put it on your VISA."

House hung up without acknowledging that bit of advice.

He could do that. He could call a taxi. He had his wallet with him.

He thought. House patted the rear pocket of his jeans and felt a flat square thing -- _check! _-- but he wasn't looking for a ride. No, he corrected himself, he was looking for a ride, he just wanted a ride from someone he knew. House refused to accept it could be any other human frailty that was driving him to consider calling everyone he knew (a substantial list) or at least everyone he knew who wouldn't hang up on him in the middle of the night (a far shorter catalog), because he felt the real human need for company. He wasn't absolutely confident about all his motives (even as far as acknowledging most of them, some of which he'd felt reluctant to examine too closely), but one thing he was certain of -- it was all _Wilsons_ fault.

House tapped another set of numbers and waited for yet another sleepy voice.

It came. "Hu-llo - this better be an emergency!"

"Cuddy. I need a ride." House counted softly to himself, "_One, two, three _-"

A heavy sigh answered. "You woke me up in the middle of the night for -- ? Oh never mind!"

He smiled.

"House . . ." She waited and he could almost see the thin, pinched line of her lips. And her disheveled, sexy hair and shocking lack of clothing. "Where are you?"

House was surprised. He really hadn't expected her to ask. "Mel's Three Bells."

"Where's that?"

"Over on the South-west side. Near Trenton."

"Oh, my god." Another long sigh. "Fine. Wait there. And wait _outside,_ I'm not coming in to find you - you can pay your own tab."

House hung up, pleased as sweet peach punch. He was getting a ride home and company - company he preferred. Company he liked a great deal actually.

House paid his tab with his VISA and, remembering his cane this time, limped out to the sidewalk to await his ride. It was only a twenty-five minute drive from where Cuddy lived to Mel's. She shouldn't be too long. Or too mad. And, if he was lucky, maybe not even too dressed.

Instead, about eight minutes later, Kutner showed up in a little Toyota with rust on the fenders.

House stared like his underling had pulled up alongside him on a donkey.

Kutner leaned over and cranked the manual window handle, rolling it down. "Hop in."

"Cuddy called _you_?" House had half a mind to tell him to go take a long drive off a short peer. Instead he decided to be thankful that he was getting a ride home and hitched the two steps over, dropping and folding his long frame into the tiny motorized cookie tin.

Kutner nodded and sniffed. "How many did you have? Are you just drunk or wasted?"

"Buy me breakfast and you'll find out."

"No thanks."

"Why'd Cuddy call you?"

"I'm not working tomorrow."

"Swell."

With a tooth shattering grind of the gears, Kutner threw the over-worked transmission into first, hit the accelerator pedal and the tiny car jumped away from the curb like a scared rabbit. House had to put out a hand to prevent himself from nose-butting the dashboard. "Take it easy!"

Kutner, next day off or not, had little patience for complaints. "Relax."

House settled back, irritated at Cuddy for siccing Kutner on him. It wasn't that he hated the guy. He didn't hate any of his employees and Kutner was as sharp as any of them, but he wasn't preferable company over a soft, pretty, nice smelling woman.

Kutner, immune to Houses' scowl and unflappable when it came to almost any awkward situation asked, "So, you and Wilson are quits for good huh?"

House mumbled, "We weren't _dating."_

"Rumors say you were."

"The people who started the rumors," House looked very pointed left to stare at Kutner before he said the next part, "and anyone who _believes_ the rumors is an idiot."

"Right."

House asked, "Patient?"

"She's better."

"Good. Send her home."

"I said better, not cured. She's still sick."

House sighed while Kutner laid out the more stubborn lingering symptoms. House tried to come up with brilliance but it was impossible after spending so much time with his favorite liquid companions.

Kutner parked in front of Houses apartment and waited for House to get out. House made a valiant effort to do so, but his leg was in bad shape. He'd run out of Vicodin earlier that day and when he went seeking more, Cuddy's response had been a heartless "Too bad."

So alcohol had done the job. Almost. There was twitching and cramping but not so much that he wouldn't be able to sleep. Enough though, that getting from the tiny car to the sidewalk was proving a herculean task.

Kutner jumped out, came around and with a hand on House right arm, hauled him to his feet with a single pull. House was astonished at the kids strength. Once upon a time, that had been him and that thought made him snap, "I can haul my own ass across twelve feet of sidewalk."

Kutner didn't twitch an eyelash. "I believe you. But you have to get to the sidewalk first."

Ignoring Houses' angry face, Kutner let House lean on him and House quit arguing about it, instead focusing his effort on navigating his way up the three entrance stairs, through his apartment door and inside to the couch, letting himself fall gratefully into its comfort.

House felt Kutners' eyes on him and held his breath. The guy wanted to _talk,_ meaning lecture House on everything he should have and should not have done to keep Wilson. He sighed. "Here we go. Are you also going to tell me now all the ways I should have been a better friend? That I should have hugged Wilson more or bought him an ice-cream?" he asked, weary of all the good intentions that had been swirling around him lately.

"I hear you went to a couple of his grieving sessions."

"So?" House asked challenging him to say more.

Kutner took him up on it. Much to Houses' irritation, he usually did. The kid had guts.

"How long are you going to pine after Wilson?"

"I'm not pining! I just want him to admit he misses me."

"He does. He's just afraid."

"Afraid of what?" House played with the arm of his leather jacket, scraping off a bit of dried food.

"His great love is dead, he misses her and he can't handle it, so he can't handle yours too. And this time by pain, I mean _you_. Wilson left because he doesn't want to end up hating you."

"He already does hate me. And don't "great love" her. Amber was Wilson's fourth or fifth "great love". He's had his _dog_ longer than any of the woman he's married or dated."

Kutner ignored that. He, as most employees at Plainsboro, had heard all about Wilson's philandering. "He doesn't hate you. But he's afraid if he stayed he _would _end up hating you."

"Oh, I get it. He told me I'm a miserable, manipulative user with whom he doesn't want to be friends anymore and so abandoned me because he _loves_ me. And people say you're an idiot. Oh wait - they _do_."

"Wilson can't be around anyone as needy as you right now. How can you be a genius and not know that?"

"Bite me."

"You're pretty screwed up for a fifty year old guy, House."

"I'm a pioneer. What? - fifty year olds can't have issues?"

"Sure, though as the years go by their issues usually don't get _worse_. You think coercing Wilson into being your pal again is going to _make_ him your pal again? You can't make cancer into AIDS if it's not AIDS."

House was tired of the touchy-feely rapport. "I tried to talk to him. He won't talk back. We're not friends. He won't even be a colleague anymore."

"You didn't talk to him, you paid a guy to spy on him and then you went to him only because you needed help."

"That wasn't the only reason."

"I'm betting he didn't know that. Go talk to him or if that's too socially awkward for a guy who's known him as long as you have, write him a letter."

"And say what?"

"Tell him you're sorry he lost her. That you _don't_ understand but you _respect_ his decision -- even if you don't. Prove that you care about what he wants even if all he's really doing is acting like a wuss and running away."

Kutner turned to the door, figuring he was pushing his luck. House was way passed his usual time-frame where he would tell someone to kiss off. "Tell him you were happy to have the years you did have and that you'll leave him alone - and then _leave_ him alone. Say you won't ever forget him . . ." People and life really were simple.

"Wilson is just people." Kutner explained to his genius boss whom everyone could see had been transparently miserable since Wilson had split. "And people do what they want to do when they're ready to do it. If Wilson still loves you, all you have to do is try and draw him back by _not_ trying to draw him back. Bribe him by _not_ bribing him."

Kutner shrugged.

So very simple.

"Say goodbye."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: **

_Say Goodbye._

Not easy when you keep running into the person who's made it clear he doesn't want you running into him anymore.

Which was the case when House, eyes on the floor as he navigated his way down an aisle to the condiments section, edged up behind a dark haired man in a black suit, both reaching for the last bottle of Hot-Sweet mustard and so when their hands bumped both reflexively looking at each other to say sorry and both freezing in place when their eyes met, House seeing Wilsons' lately unreadable browns and Wilson seeing Houses first apologetic then wary blues, both having expected to see anyone but each other.

House stared for just a few seconds before releasing the plastic squeeze bottle and dropping his eyes away to walk on.

And then Wilson said, "You can have it."

House paused imperceptibly and continued walking. "Doesn't matter." He muttered, not turning around. House had walked several more feet before --

-- "I don't mind." He heard Wilson say. "I know you like it more than me."

_That._ That intimate knowledge Wilson had of him (that he had made clear no longer meant anything to him), made Houses gut twist in pain, causing him turn back in reflex and, to stymie the unexpected emotional hurt, say coldly . "Stop the cripple pity. You never indulged it when we were friends."

The shot hit home and Wilson closed his mouth and turned partly away, balancing on his toes for a few seconds like he did when he was faced with an uncomfortable situation.

House waited, only another second or so, before he turned away again and kept walking. He felt somehow, those might be the last words he would ever say to Wilson and the thought made his gut twist up again and an uncomfortable lump form in his throat.

House did his shopping, this time making sure he didn't run into Wilson again. Peanut butter. Jam. Apples, milk. A fifth of bourbon. White bread (none of that whole grain stuff Wilson used to buy when he was staying at his apartment after wife number three started cheating on him, or after Wilson started cheating on her - hard to keep that many wives and related problems straight in his head). After today he would change grocery stores.

Not too many items in his basket, he still had to carry the bag to his car with one hand and he wasn't as strong as he used to be. But his right arm was stronger than his left so he switched his cane to his left hand, gathered the paper bag under his right arm and limped out to his fifteen year old Pontiac that Wilson used to bitch at him to get rid of.

At least he had the sense not to drive a god awful Volvo.

He could buy a new car, but this one was already retro-fitted to full hand controls and, bench seat and all, it was easy to slide into. New cars, unless you wanted to pay through the nose for a more expensive full sized, were more cramped and always had a hump in the middle to climb over so if you were forced to park close to a wall or wanted to avoid a puddle, it was almost impossible to slide over to the passenger door and get out that way. Unless you had _two_ good legs.

Living as a cripple presented unique challenges. Cars, apartments, furniture placement, flooring, bathroom fixtures - when energy was at a premium and movement needed to be efficient or not at all, everything made a difference.

So he kept his old car. And he stayed in his old apartment on the ground floor and didn't use area rugs and bathed (almost never showering because that entailed a lot of standing), and he took his time getting out of bed because he had no choice. He was late a lot because he hurt in the mornings, sometimes for hours.

And drank because the Vicodin wasn't enough anymore to put him to sleep for eight hours or get him through a day where he had to be on his feet a lot. Since Cuddy had halved his dosage things were even more touchy when it came to balancing leg pain and sleep, walking and sitting, a good morning and a very bad one.

Over the years, Wilson had _seen_ the pain he was in, but he had never _felt_ it. Explaining it never made a difference in his former friends attitude so House had simply stopped trying to convince him that the pain was not only real but getting worse as the years went on.

House had never faced the death of someone he loved, true, but he knew what pain felt like (the non-physical variety) and he knew what it felt like to lose someone. In fact, he knew what it was to obsess over someone and in fact had never said goodbye to Stacy until she had come back and made it clear she wanted him in her life again. It was only then he realized he had hung on to five years of memories rather than love.

This time he would say goodbye.

_I've moved on, _Wilson had said to him asthpugh for him their fifteen years of friendship was just a pit stop on his road trip to a far better best friend. Those words had hurt the most. Not even the name calling had bothered him. _Miserable jerk, manipulative bastard, addict, drunk. _House'd heard those and worse from Wilson and just about everybody for years, brushing them off like dandruff. But now he would _move on_ too.

Except as he held the pen over the note-paper he had no idea what to actually write. His wallet was sitting on the desk not a foot from his hand. He fished out his check book, tore one off and wrote: _James Wilson_ on the To line, _Fifteen thousand dollars_ on the Amount line and added his signature at the bottom. He folded it, stuffed it into the envelope and went back to the note-paper.

After fifteen years, what do you tell a person who suddenly denies the friendship was real and walks away?

_You spread misery because you're unable to feel anything else_. Wilsons' words again.

House bit his lip. He was sure he remembered laughs and fun, pizza and beer, jokes on colleagues and practical jokes played on each other. He recalled listening to Wilson and occasionally (though Wilson always adamantly denied it) taking and applying his advice. House remembered lunches and billiards, bowling and even dogs baby-sat - and hadn't he given Wilson good advice sometimes?

He had not felt so discarded since Stacy left.

House understood the grief Wilson was going through would temporarily blot a lot of good years in his life out, make him feel like he would never be happy again unless he did something - moved, changed jobs, changed friends . . .but blotting out fifteen years worth is a bit much. If Wilson hadn't _wanted_ to help or protect him, then why did he? House knew Wilson was as lonely as he was and that's why for him Wilson had worked.

House ran his fingers through his hair, willing the pen to find the right words but he just didn't understand what was happening. Had he really been that much work? Had he caused Wilson that much grief? House had heard it often enough that he understood that maybe he wasn't so easy a man to be a friend to, but was he utterly impossible? Fifteen years of testimony said no. Cuddy hiring him (and submitting to an awful lot of trouble to keep him), said no.

_You are the long distance runner of needy._

Cuddy should have taken a good long look at Wilson's track record. He was sunk so deep in a pit pf need, no-one and nothing was ever enough to fill it.

House was in touch with his own wants enough to at least recognize that he needed one other person besides himself to have some level of, if not happiness, then contentment. Wilson had fulfilled that. House had a career that he loved, his music and his television. The only missing piece was one person in his life, that one friend and that's all. Wilson had been that friend.

House felt his eyes water and forced any tears back, refusing their witness. From now on he would not allow himself to miss Wilson. For the second time he had let someone into his life, his mind, his heart - _his soul_ Stacy used to call it - and for the second time (when he hadn't become what they figured he ought to have after so much hard work on their part to change or "fix" him), they had unceremoniously, after weeks of deceit and almost without warning, dumped him and split.

House took up the pen and wrote three words. It was all he could summon to say because it summed up how he thought and felt: "I don't understand."

He stuffed that in the envelope and sealed it. He addressed it, not bothering with a return address (he didn't entertain any illusions he was going to get a reply), stamped it and put in his jacket. He'd mail it right away.

Then he would _move on_.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: **

_"It is never too late to be what you might have been." T.S. Eliot._

XXX

Wilson stared at the unopened envelope as he sipped his morning coffee.

Upon awakening, the early Saturday sunshine had turned the little kitchen daffodil yellow. The dark rich fluid had turned the morning taste in his mouth to the flavors of Italy and Greece. Fetching his Friday mail in slippered feet and sorting through it, turned his mind to the mundane things of routine and ordinary life. Things comforting and normal.

Flipping through the collection of bills and flyers his fingers found the small white envelope marked with his name and address. No return address, no frills and that handwriting he knew so intimately had made him forget all delusions of regular new Wilson. He dropped the letter as if it had stung him. Suddenly his heart had leaped to his throat and he had no idea why. He had moved on. People did that after great loss. They re-examined themselves and tidied up undone life things that had worked loose over the years. Out-of-control things. Roads that had turned and taken them somewhere they hadn't planned on. So they leave that road and the stuff piled on the shoulder behind - everything that hurt - and embraced the healing.

He'd been reading a lot about that. Among a half dozen books about bereavement, "The Dawning of Soul" was the newest hard-bound written by a new-age psychotherapist who insisted a purge of what ever had been dragging you down was a vital first step to getting over grief. _Death should spark new life. Blind grief shouldn't halt us in our tracks, it should clarify thought and spur to new and better - not bitter - action._

Already he could quote whole passages of similar tripe, paisley pandering typical to most of the volumes he'd explored. _Another few chapters and I'll be almost A-okay! _

Everything in the above must be taken with subjectivity, Wilson thought. The six hundred pages meant well, but in any practicality, their meaning was vague and smacked of Mother Earth crystal rubbing. He had not read quite a third of _Dawning_ before he thrust it aside as nothing more than a feel good tome that made him feel no different at all. Certainly not good.

What were feelings anyway? As a physician he knew they were physical reactions and changes spurred by a variety of chemicals pumped out by a variety of glands in his body, giving him motive or not, urges or not, reactions to stimuli or not. If eyes perceive danger - adrenaline administered and so fight or flight. A series of words strike a chord as ridiculous or conjure images of awkward situations the intellect finds humorous, and so dopamine elicits laughter and good feeling.

Anger, hope, joy, sadness, mourning . . .all arose from the body and the mind working in inextricably and often unfathomable levels of harmony. And why should he feel anything but sad? Can't he feel bad for a while? Something'll come along to replace it eventually.

Wilson knew he wasn't just sad, he was angry. Amber had left him and he could do nothing about it. He had loved her. He was sure of it. But love didn't stop people from hurting one another. It didn't stop time or accidents or almost dying or dying. It didn't stop heartbreak or heartache. Wilson wanted to return to a time where he felt hope.

A white envelope, nothing but a rectangle of milled pulp and ink marks, should not cause his heart to trot like a Kentucky yearling and his mind to pitch and whirl like a wobbling treadle.

But of course, since he knew who it was from, it did all those things. He hated that it would have that effect on him. He hated his inability to clarify his thought and spark a new life and move on to better action. Even though he was sure he had already done all those things.

He was so depressed he could hardly eat. The coffee tasted bitter now and had gone cold.

Wilson stuffed the letter in a drawer, still sealed and mute. That road was miles ago.

XXX

His phone rang and he picked it up from its rest not even the third ring in. His phone sat two feet from the drawer he probably wouldn't open. He carried the cordless into the living room casual-like, so the letter would not suspect he was thinking about it.

"Hello?"

"James?" It was Blythe House.

Wilson cursed House up and down for having such a darling sweet mom. "H-hello, Misses House." _How did you get this number?_ That's right, he hadn't changed it. He'd said goodbye to his longest friend, resigned his job and got a new one, had put half his stuff in storage and was planning to eventually leave the State.

But he'd kept his old telephone number.

"I, . . .I can only imagine," Blythe House said in starts and stops.

"Is there something wrong?" Wilson stared through the kitchen door to the envelope that mocked him from its fox hole.

"Gregory, . . .he's . . ."

Wilson wondered if it was at all healthy for his heart to be beating that fast and hard. And when did the floor start heaving like the sea? "Is, . . is he . . .?" Impossible words. Impossible thought. No new life. No better action.

Everything worse, worse, worse . . .

_Ha-Ha-Ha! the little letter said. See? -- You should have read me._

"He's getting married."

Wilson was sure he had heard worse jokes in his life, but not many. "Married?" He whispered it into the line. _Don't think she heard that._ As stupid as the question sounded, he had to ask, "Are you sure?"

"Of course." Her tone said _Something wrong with that boy_.

Wilson knew it had to be a mistake because _all_ truths were falsehoods if it were _true. _House doesn't get married. House doesn't date. House only has a relationship if it falls in his lap and then he makes jokes about the female who fell in his lap and what marvelous things she did while on his lap after she fell.

"Who?" _In Gods' name!?_

"Well, no one right now."

Wilson felt his forehead. The flu' was going around. "You just said . . ."

"He's getting married. He wrote me, told me he was thinking about getting married."

Wilson thought he understood where House got his fourth dimensional thinking. "So he's not," Wilson asked the insane telephone, "getting married. But he's _thinking_ about getting married?" Every Earthly object also heard and returned to its rightful place. Anyone of significance who had rolled over in their gave were busy righting themselves.

"Well, yes."

Like thinking about maybe taking a trip to Mercury or Neptune. You know -- _some_ _day!_

Wilson suddenly remembered who he was and who he had recently been friends with. "Did House call you . .about me? I mean, do you know he and I -- we're not friends anymore?"_ Did House author this little script?_

Wilson could feel the sudden temperature drop all the way from Maine. A chill in her voice to rival Pluto, "No." The disapproving frown of the Queen of England could not have made him feel more ashamed.

"Why are you not friends with Gregory anymore?"

Wilson knew he should have anticipated this. Not the call, just the tentacles from the past ever reaching out to wrap their million suckers around his limbs and pull. "My girlfriend died."

_Wow, did that sound sorry-assed. "Things were, . .are complicated, ?Misses House. Greg and I . . ."_

"Yes . . .?"

"We just . . .he's too much . . ." _Tell the truth._ ". . .work."

"But he . . .tried to save her, didn't he? Doctor Cuddy called me when he was in that coma. Gregory almost died." Blythes voice turned from ice water to wet rag. "He had a seizure and . . .he was sick. Very sick . _. .again_."

Wilson knew it. All those things he knew. House had almost died. Risked himself with only a second or two hesitation. Not even. _Almost died._

Not _died_.

"Why would you end the friendship _now_?"

_Had he died . . .?_ Wilson listened to Blythe as she rolled out the virtues of her son, and his faults. But mostly his virtues.

_Had House died . . ._

Blythe spoke of House saving people, of his pain and endurance. She reminded Wilson about how much her son relied on him and how much she knew House cared about him. How much her son loved him.

_Had House died, would that have made the difference?_

"Don't you recall your Bible?" Blythe House asked, conveniently forgetting that he was Jewish. "Abraham as good as offered up his son . . ."

Wilson frowned at the religious reference which, applied to House, was not only laughable but one which House would have mocked and dismissed as a fable.

_As good as . . ._

"It means," Blythe continued as though reading his mind "one whose whole intent is to carry through even if the consequences to themselves are bad."

House risked his life. He said _okay_. _Sure_, _I'll do it. _He had said it all with a single nod.

_House looked up at me and I saw it in his eyes that he saw in mine that a remote chance for Amber was worth more to me than the almost certain death of him._ To his shame, Wilson remembered that look. House had taken everything he had asked and tried to make it happen.

A question posed itself in the cold stew of his mind: _Suppose House __**had**__ died? What would I have felt about him then? Would that have been penance enough for trying but failing to save Amber? Would I have felt the same way about my excuses to leave if House had died in that operating room? Would I have written a glowing eulogy for him, forgetting all my reasons for bitterness?_

Wilson rubbed a finger and thumb over his eyes while Blythe took him to the cleaners for abandoning her beloved son.

Wilson finally understood why he had run away. He was unable to face himself. The ungrateful Wilson who had been disappointed that House lived while Amber died._ I ran to ease my conscience._

_I ran selfishly._

House had decided that his death could spark new life. That his friends blind grief shouldn't halt him in his tracks. Instead it clarified his thought and spurred him to new and better - not bitter - action.

Wilson wanted to thank Blythe House for the call but she pulled her good breeding back into place and asked him kindly to call her son and tell him they were still friends. Explain and forgive and get forgiveness. "He won't listen at first, you know." Blythe the mother said, who had known her son far longer and far better than any upstart Jewish boy. "But he will in time. He'll listen and try to do what's right."

She poured all seventy-one years of a mothers forgiving love into her final word on the matter, "He may not always succeed, but my Gregory always tries to do what's right."

"Did he really talk about getting _married_?"

Blythe sighed a mothers indulgent sigh. "Gregory talked about a lot of things. He called me up and said maybe his life would be better if he got married. It was so un-like him to . . .blindly throw out something like that. It seemed as if he were grasping at something he didn't understand to, . . .to _fix_ something he didn't understand. Something that was hurting him, about. . .I don't know, his life or him. I could tell immediately something was wrong. He sounded so sad. Understand that Gregory talks to me but he never _talks _to me. Not about his plans or his thoughts. He always talked to _you_, you see. But this time he called _me_. I knew something was terribly wrong."

Wilson thanked her and said goodbye, waiting for her to hang up. Then he set the phone down on the coffee table.

The letter called to him but he resisted. It was a goodbye letter. He knew it skin to bone and back.

But it would not see the light of day now. Now he didn't want a goodbye. Now he had to figure out some way to say hello again.

Nothing is ever free and he wondered what the price would be.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: **

On the day Wilson had decided to speak with House, he retrieved the letter from the drawer where he had stuck and forgotten about it. It felt just thick enough for a single sheet of paper, maybe two. There was no return address, but by the handwriting he knew it was from House.

He had no idea what to do about it. He could open it, read it and find out what a goodbye letter from House was like - he had never received one from him before. He could read it and find out that House might have poured out his heart for once in his life (though it was pretty skimpy for a heart-bleeding missive), or he could ignore it and hope it was a letter saying he was sorry and missing him or asking him to please come be his friend again (neither sounded remotely like House).

Wilson decided the best thing to do is to pretend it never arrived. If he read it, he might find words that would discourage him from carrying out what he already had decided to do.

Wilson tore it up and flushed it down the john.

There was a lamp in the living room on, its soft yellow light shone through his living room window onto the grey morning sidewalk. It was early, not even seven AM, but House was up. Saturdays were usually his day off, so Wilson had no idea why House would be up at this hour though maybe his schedule had changed. _There is a world beyond you._

He knocked and in only a few seconds the door was opened. House was awake, and dressed but he held a glass in his hand a third full of honey colored liquid.

Each man stared at the other until House looked down at his hand that held the glass and found it was shaking a little. He quickly placed the glass on his desk behind the door, out of sight.

Not a work day then. Wilson wondered how numb House had planned on getting prior to breakfast and how much of that agenda was from pain he had caused him. He didn't dare ask.

"You're right." Wilson said, his voice squeaking just a bit. "I wanted justice, and though I've changed my mind about my right to it, I still don't think that's too much to ask for an innocent life."

House stared at Wilson with those eyes that told the truth at the worst possible times. Just when your barriers were at their weakest, he'd open those big, bright blues and topple your world with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and damn the son-of-a-bitch if he wasn't almost always right, leaving you no choice but to agree. 'Cause if you didn't - you were a _liar. _

"There is no justice." House said sadly but with sharp, straight as an arrow honesty. "There's just _us."_

House stepped back and let Wilson in his door, something he never thought he would be doing again. "I cracked my skull and almost died. Had Amber lived, that would have been justice too."

Wilson acknowledged that with a remorseful nod. He had yet to thank House for risking his own life for hers, an act beyond the call for justice. "Why did you let me in?" Wilson asked. Houses' honesty hurt. Even now, months later, her death stung. But the slow steady ache of his need for House had never really left at all. If there was no fairness in life, irony made up for it. Maybe now his deeply rooted, convoluted and confusing connection with House could be transmuted into a healthier need. A need where he knew how to say no without guilt or speak an honest yes and be happy about it.

Amber had taught him something after all.

"Because, even though you hate me," House had not paused for Wilsons unspoken thoughts, but went on talking in his mistaken belief that Wilson was not there to actually make up. "I miss you so much." House actually started to cry, just those few silent drops of water squeezed out between blinks and ignored by their creator like they were a shameful leaking pipe.

Wilson thought it had to be a sign of the end of the world, such was the unexpected nature of tears on the cheeks of a man who never cried or showed sadness or guilt or remorse of any kind. This had to be a good thing and Wilson refused to interrupt it with words like "Don't worry about it." or "No need to cry." Things he wouldn't mean.

Also, he knew a single wrong statement would stop up the damn once more and it might never shift again, so he didn't for one second want House to stop. This was too rare. This was a _gift_. It was good for House to cry. It was a portrait of the mans humanism and ability to need with the depth and feeling of a bonafide, vulnerable human being, and it felt so good to see House do it. God, it was heaven!

"I-I . . ." House actually stuttered. He seemed to think he had reached the end of what he perceived as his painfully short reprieve where Wilson was freely talking to him again. "I'm sure the clock's going to strike midnight anytime now." He finished awkwardly.

_And his whole life, he thinks, will turn back into a pumpkin again._

Wilson never stopped loving this man and scolded himself for thinking it was possible. Why did people have to almost lose the best things before taking notice that they had almost gone missing?

_House grew while I away_.

Wilson made a mental note to thank god later that he had sense enough to come home and see it in the flesh. Wilson felt his eyes were perhaps opened a little wider lately. Amber had dazzled him. Her death had blinded him. Here in the dim honesty of Houses' untidy living room, his eyes saw clearly again. Just enough. If he and House returned to their normal state of intimacy and indeed carried on as before, settling comfortably into their suited roles as friends, just a little mystery would still be left between them. The perfect amount.

But soon confusion and embarrassment set into Houses shoulders and his eyes, now dry, were no longer able to meet Wilsons. So Wilson enacted the second sign of the end and reached out, wrapping his arms around House, hugging the stuffing out of him. He waited until the tension fell from his friends shoulders, until his muscles and bones relaxed under the unfamiliar closeness of Wilson.

"I love you." Wilson said to him. "And I'm sorry." Then he let him go.

House freed himself but he didn't jump up or limp off to a few calming beers. He just stared at the man he had claimed was the most important in his life. "Me too."

It was said so quietly Wilson had almost missed it. Noises to staying any longer would be expecting too much, too soon from either of them. Wilson knew he had to go now, not because he needed to or because House wanted to be alone (which he probably did to shake off a few of the feelings that had settled on him), but because it was best for both of them, and because he had work.

Wilson stood up, donned his jacket and opened Houses front door, but not before looking back at his friend. "Lunch today? I think I might have a little money left, even after fifteen years."

House nodded, a shadow of surprise still flickering across his features, which didn't look so tired now.

"Meet me at O'Shays at twelve. Oh, and House . . ._fire_ that weird P.I."

House smiled, the state of his heart often evident by how many of his teeth were showing. Wilson counted.

"You never opened my letter, did you?" House asked.

Wilson turned back. "No. I figured it was a goodbye letter, and decided, well, because I didn't want to _say_ it anymore, I didn't want to _hear_ it either. Or read it even. I tore it up." Wilson frowned. "Why?" Maybe he'd been mistaken. Maybe he should have read it. "What did it say? What was in it?"

House shook his head and an impish, very House-ish smile touched his being as a whole. He shrugged. "Nothing."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: **

I know what the price is now.

It's been weeks since I made up with House and, far from House being House as House has always been and should always be, he's not himself at all. He's circling me like a wary sparrow trying to figure out where it might be safe to land. I had broken my branches and taken away any perch for his wayward soul, and suddenly they're back, right where they should be.

He isn't. He's widened his circle in fact.

House has no idea if he should land or not. I can see him trying to diagnose the problem., puzzling over it, trying to find the disease with which he thinks I am still afflicted. He's afraid of being stung by my weird Wilson's Back Now What Do I Do? illness that makes about as much sense to him as me leaving after fifteen years did. I have the dreadful feeling that even if he did swallow his fear and tread a toe or two on my hardened limbs, he'd tread softly, fearful of breaking something off me. House is afraid of the friendship now.

He was made sick by my diseased absence and now I'm all better, ready to run up and down on the green, green grass of PPTH while he's still limping around on a wing and a prayer, trying to sort it all out in his head. Trying to locate his mis-placed trust or manufacture a verifiable belief that this won't happen again.

He's a tired creature with clipped wings and one leg. If he lands and the branch breaks . . .

Funny how, on your part, you can imagine things going - the operative word being _imagine_ - saying the words, smoothing the corners, straightening the roads, ironing out the wrinkles, even shedding a few tears and a warm hug, but then things don't go that way at all. They go their own way, on _their_ part, the path of Anything Goes when it involves two autonomous beings with vastly different approaches to problems.

There's my way: say nice things, shake hands and pretend all is well. The bad has been erased. Am I really that naive?

Then there's Houses' way: Doubt, question, stare uncomfortably, find out why it happened at all, wonder when it will all come crashing down again. He looks like a shell shocked soldier who's been through a war and expects nothing less for tomorrow. Plain old House. He's that cynical? Why am I always so surprised by it?

After our little meeting at his place, House decided to go into work. His patient, I have no idea who - that morning was the first time I'd spoken to House regarding anything to do with himself for months - was worsening and House had no idea what was wrong with her. "It's not cancer, it's not AIDS-related, it's not auto-immune." He complained to me. It made me smile in my temporary office. Foreman had my old one. Good for Eric, bad for me. I'm on a different floor than House now. He has to walk to the elevator, take it one floor down, and walk down another three long halls and two corners to get to me.

It means, as much as I'd like him to visit me like he used to, he can't. It hurts him too much. I might see him at lunch time once or twice a week. We don't eat together yet. I'm afraid to ask and he's terrified. So I come to his office now, and we talk when he's not busy in a differential or inventing ways to drive Cuddy up the wall.

What a colossal ass I've been. I've frightened him off. It's going to take months of coaxing to get him to trust me again. If he ever does. I'd forgotten - no - I'd dismissed my very intimate knowledge of him in that when his heart is broken, there's almost no repairing it. House has many little, well - _large_ - flaws, but that's his one Gibralter.

I had dismissed it when I'd dumped him because, then, I had no intentions of ever seeing him again. I hadn't counted on his determination at the time to still see me. He hired a private investigator to spy on me for god's sake, infuriating me at the time. But then I hadn't given him much choice. I forced him to investigate and have me followed. How fucked up is that?

All he wanted was to talk. Strangers do that all the time.

Referring to his patients illness, "What does it look like?" I asked.

House stopped his restless pacing and stared at the floor of his office. "It looks like either AIDS, cancer or auto-immune - either one could cause her symptoms. Either one - she's going to croak."

"Well, sometimes cancer doesn't look like cancer," I said trying to help, "it looks like something else. Maybe this just _looks_ like AIDS or an auto-immune?" _Maybe I just looked like a friend? For fifteen years I called him my best friend. I said it to him and just about everybody. _

_Maybe House doesn't want to look too closely at me anymore. If he circles instead of landing and the branch snaps again, it won't make him fall too, breaking him in pieces on the way down._

I felt like crap.

How can such a jerk make me feel like a worse one? And why should I feel sorry for someone who, even when he tries to, _can't_ change?

Maybe that's why I feel sorry?

So I figure I need to try something new.

"Dinner at my place?" I ask him.

So new he won't see it coming.

"Your place?" House answered. I could see the puzzle in his mind already taking flight.

"Yeah. Spaghetti and salad, garlic toast, . . I've got some really nice scotch. A celebration."

"Celebrating what?"

I shrugged. "Whatever comes to mind."

House stared at me suspiciously. "My birthday's in two months, this isn't some sort of lame ass early surprise party is it?"

I laughed a little. I had forgotten his birthday was coming up. "I wouldn't torture you that way." The saddest part about his returning expression was, he didn't agree. With the torture part, that is.

"What time?" He asked.

"'Bout seven."

House nodded and returned to his little differential, but I could tell by the way he hung his head he was deep in thought about me. _What the hell was I up to? _was written all over his face.

I felt another pang of sorrow, and guilt, that House no longer trusted me. I'd been _me_, nice, easy going, working with him and all that, after Ambers death, then at the end of my nice me, I'd called him miserable and told him I wasn't his friend anymore and maybe we hadn't been all along. I knew what House was thinking: if he can't trust nice Wilson, is mysterious Wilson worth the risk?

Before turning his attention back to his team, House gave me one last suspicious look.

He had every right.

XXX

I did. I cooked spaghetti and garlic toast and tossed a salad. I even bought a pecan pie - a rarity in these parts - 'cause I know he had it once and really liked it. And he likes nuts. And he _is_ nuts. And talks about _his_ nuts. And I _have_ nuts. So maybe this'll be okay.

Or maybe I'm insane. Either way, we're having dinner and when I knocked House showed up at his door _groomed_! I haven't seen that since, well a couple of years at least. He brushed his hair for the judge and wore the tie I got him. And he dressed for Cameron and when I drove over to pick him up, he had his grey suit laid out on the couch covered in plastic for some reason. When I asked him if he was planning on wearing that tonight he shook his head.

"So when are you wearing it?"

"I might not."

Like I said - nuts. I walked him to my car and he slid into the passenger seat, tucking his cane between his knees and gripping it like he was being driven to his execution.

"Relax." I said.

"What's this all about?" He asked.

I sighed. Things had so changed between us, more than he realized and more than I was even fully aware that hour. But he was still House. Cantankerous, suspicious, unthankful ass.

I still love him. _I'm _nuts. "It's about me doing something nice for you to make _myself_ feel better about having been a cold, unfeeling jerk to _you_." May as well be thoroughly honest. House respects that even if it hurts.

"And, " I went on, "Because I want to do something nice for you just cause I want to make _you_ feel good this evening. I want you to be happy and have a nice meal and companionship," Then I let him off the social obligations to false gratefulness, just in case he felt no designs to enjoying himself or feeling good or happy about the offering or anything else, "even if you don't feel like any of those things. But, just in case," I parked the car in my slot. "here we are." I finished.

House was staring at me like a man expecting to look over and see his friend and instead finding a two foot green Martian wearing his friends black, tailored suit.

"This isn't like you." House said.

"What isn't?" I asked. "Doing something nice?"

"No. Being honest about the reasons." He was still gaping those pretty eyes at me. "Did you join a religion?"

"No." But I decided to leave it at that. He'll soon figure it out. Shortly after I do. "Come on."

I lead him into the apartment Amber and I had shared. I changed the furniture around the day I decided to stop being a complete idiot and repair some of the bridges I'd set on fire. This man being the first and foremost of my gleeful but mistaken arson, my best friend.

House looked around with a bit of surprise on his face and I felt warm because of it. I'd done it for him more than me. I'd mourned and now I was moving on from moving on. I didn't want House to be reminded of that god awful four months any more than necessary.

The place looked brighter now. It felt fresh again. I felt fresh. Maybe this new start with House would work, and by work I mean maybe we won't give up on each other even when it seems like that's the easiest choice and the road to true happiness. If there's one thing I learned from Group and being away from House - I still wasn't happy, I was just sharing my misery with others while we all tried to figure out what happiness is.

I still don't know, only I suspect it involves loving someone. I remember that about him. Despite all his faults and screw-ups over the years, I did love House. Now I _wanted_ to.

"Make yourself at home." I said, fussing in the kitchen with the food I'd pre-prepared, reheating it and setting out plates on the table.

House sat on the couch, well away from the kitchen I noticed. Away from me. Still circling.

"House," I said, trying not to sound annoyed by his distant scrutiny. "I won't bite. _Again_." I snapped my head to one side in a gesture for him to come on over, and he did.

We ate. I talked about my new office and how I wished it was on the same floor as his.

He listened and said "Yeah."

I tried to share memories, good ones, about Amber's funeral and who was there and why and my time off after.

"I wasn't invited." House reminded me. Can't share what you didn't share.

I feel like a heel. But determination to repair this mess was too uppermost in my mind for that to discourage me for more than a few seconds.

Finishing my wine, I set the delicate glass on the table and looked at him a long time. He didn't look over at me more than once and then only to see why I had stopped talking.

"House. I'm sorry."

That confused him, so I went on. "I love you. I never did stop that, you know, loving you - caring. I just thought I could recapture the way I felt with Amber if I got away from you." When he didn't say anything back and just stared, "I have changed though. I'm still going to take care of myself. Sometimes put myself first instead of you." I laughed, shaking my head. The man still baffled me. "I still don't get you, House. And I'm not going to run to your rescue anymore when you call me drunk in the middle of the night, or compound one insult with another and end up in jail 'cause you felt it unimportant to respect a cop, or Cuddy or the _President._ But I'll still help IF I can. I'll still love you."

I stood and gathered up the plates. "That didn't change and, after all the crap you've put me through, I guess it's never going to."

House just nodded and fiddled with his napkin. Taciturn is the word with him tonight.

So I walked over to him and stood there, looking down at him, offering the floor to him, waiting for him to respond. "You don't have to say anything. But if you have anything you want to say to me, go ahead. This is my place, I won't be walking out my own door."

"My dad died a couple of days ago."

I know my mouth popped and hung open. I met his dad once. I know House hated him. I know now the reason for the plastic covered suit. I know little else. "The funeral's..?"

"Tomorrow afternoon at four."

"You want me to take you?"

House looked up at me, and somewhere in that look he said a mouth-full. He didn't want to go, that was clear. He had, in fact, already decided not to go, but he knew he ought to. And he knew I'd push him to and eventually have to drag his ass there so he wouldn't spend the rest of his life feeling crappy for letting down his mom, whom he didn't hate at all.

House said the words and I knew my place again. Sometimes I would still have to rescue him. "I'm not going." He announced. And damn if he didn't stare up at me like a kid hoping he'd managed to manipulate his friend just one more time. Now he waited for my response that would tell him whether I was going to let him get away with it. Whether he could trust that I loved him enough to let him. Whether or not it was safe to land again.

I did turn it over for a few seconds. I could just assert my new-found freedom of choice and say no. _Your dad, his funeral, your problem._ But this was an _IF_. I _can_ help, and this type of helping won't hurt _me_, and mostly I wanted to, therefore I would.

"You're going." I said, brooking no argument.

House smiled a little. His wings were tired. House closed the circle a little. My branches could stand unwavering in his storms now or give a little under his weight. But they wouldn't break again so all of that was okay. He landed but did not fold his wings. His games were still in play but I knew the rules now. Made my own in fact.

The game was a gimpy foot. "_Make_ me."

XXX

That IS the **END**. This was my bit of alternate pre-Birthmarks episode fic.


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